Potato Industry Challenge

[JadeOfMaar]

Brief

Deep Sky (a sci-fantasy, far future agency... mine) would like to test the muscle of any agency capable of producing interstellar class ships. The challenge: To gather at least 2 super-heavy asteroids in orbit of either the homeworld or whatever celestial body that your space program doesn't mind performing full industrial exploitation of. The asteroids are presumed to be rich with 1 or more rare resources that won't easily, or at all, be found in the surfaces of most planets.

This challenge is of the sort "something for you to do and use for progression" and is not "a comparison of ships built with the same parts/performance" so you will find generous limits on part mods. In fact... this should simply be impossible to do without part mods.

If you wish, you may emulate this as a contract in a career game with the following specs (as a baseline anyway. Tune them as you see fit):

• +1 million investment
• +/- 5 times the invest amount if you succeed or fail
• +/- 30 if you succeed or fail

 

Mission Reporting

Provide at least these details of the vessel(s) you use:

• Ship dry mass, wet mass, propellants, launch cost.
• Mission start time, elapsed time, per asteroid, and total mission time. If you use one ship for all asteroids, then idle time between pursuing asteroids counts. Less time is better.
• Mass of each asteroid at the time of capture; Mass after you used out whatever necessary resource(s) to fuel your ship and parked the asteroid.
• Screenshots or video highly recommened but not required. (Honesty is key.)

Mission Unique Bonus

• Participation (Anyone can get this)
  • Big Daddy ISRU Program (A): Use the Ore to produce propellants other than <any stock resource> or LqdHydrogen.
  • Big Daddy ISRU Program (B): Use resources other than Ore to produce your propellants. (You must keep all the Ore. The rest of your space program will find use for it.)
• Champion (Only one can get this)
  • We run on efficiency!: Use the least average asteroid resource out of all the space programs. (Does not count if you rely heavily on gravity assists. We want those asteroids within the next decade at most, not next century.)
  • No order is too tall: Bring the most asteroids.

 

Rules

• You must be using a planet pack that makes asteroids wider and heavier. Known packs allowed:
  • Galaxies Unbound
  • JNSQ
  • Whirligig World
  • RSS
• HyperEdit, VesselMover and other obvious cheat tools not allowed, obviously.
• No restriction on part mods (except for propulsion systems).
• Propulsion system mods allowed:
  • KSPI-E
  • OPT Continued (for its Dark Drive)
  • Far Future Technologies (especially with "Calvin's patch" or equivalent, that buffs their Isp's so that they're properly interstellar grade)
  • Karbonite Plus (for Karborundum)
  • MEV Heavy Industries
  • Interstellar Technologies
• Propulsion mods and techniques disallowed:
  • Wormholes, Jump gates or (other) FTL tech
  • Anything resembling EM Drive, GN Drive, or other self-fueling/infinitely fueled engine
  • Anything that causes engines to be infinitely fueled (I know of mods that contain "fuel cells" and "generators" that produce fuel, Ore or EelectricCharge for practically no cost)
  • Any obviously extremely imbalanced or "sandbox fun" propulsion mod

 

Goals / Points

• +1 for basic finish
• +3 if you bring a 3rd asteroid
• +2 for each asteroid (after 3) that you bring
• +1 if the target body has > 1g
• +1 if the target body has > 2g
• +5 if you use one ship and don't do parallel missions

 

Un-scaled Asteroids

If you would like to attempt this challenge without the asteroid sizing then the requirements are as follows:

You must bring home 3 E-sized asteroids.

Goal changes:

• +3 if you bring home 5 asteroids
• +1 for each asteroid (after 5) that you bring

Edited November 16, 2021 by JadeOfMaar

[NuclearFish]

Challenge accepted!